CHAPTER XII: CHURCH AND STATE.

§ 638. In various ways it has been shown that originally Church and State are undistinguished. I do not refer only to the fact that in China and Japan the conceptions of this world and the other world have been so mingled that both worlds have had a living ruler in common. Nor am I recalling only the truth that the primitive ruler, vicegerent of his deceased ancestor, whom, as priest, he propitiates not only by sacrifices but by carrying out his dictates, thus becomes one in whose person are united government by the dead and government by the living. But I have in view the further fact that where the normal order has not been broken, the organizations for sacred rule and for secular rule remain practically blended, because the last remains in large measure the instrument of the first. Under a simple form this relation is well shown us in Mangaia, where—

And this theocratic type of government has been fully developed in various places. Much more pronounced than among the Hebrews was it among some of the Egyptians.

Other cases of the subjection of the temporal power to the spiritual power, if less extreme than this, are still sufficiently marked.

But in these cases, or some of them, the supremacy of the spiritual head has practically given place to that of the temporal head: a differentiation of the two forms of rule which has arisen in Polynesia also, under kindred conditions.

Where Church and State are not so completely fused as by thus making the terrestrial ruler a mere deputy for the celestial ruler, there still continues a blending of the two where primitive beliefs survive in full strength, and where, consequently, the intercessors between gods and men continuing to be all-powerful merge civil rule in ecclesiastical rule. In Egypt for example—

Along with religious beliefs equally intense with those in Egypt, there went in the ancient American societies a like unity of Church and State. The Peruvians exhibited a complete identity of the ecclesiastical government with the political; in Yucatan the authority of priests rivalled that of kings; and in harmony with the tradition of the ancient Mexicans that the priests headed their immigration, there was such mingling of sacerdotal with civil rule as made the two in great measure one.

That this blending of Church and State is not limited to societies in which the gods are apotheosized rulers more or less ancient, but is found also in societies characterized by Edition: current; Page: [127] cults which are not indigenous, and that it continues as long as religious beliefs are accepted without criticism, we are shown by the history of mediæval Europe.

But in this case as in all cases, various causes subsequently conspire to produce differentiation and increasing separation. Co-operating efficiently though they at first do as having interests in large measure the same, yet the agencies for carrying on celestial rule and terrestrial rule eventually begin to compete for supremacy; and the competition joins with the growing unlikenesses of functions and structures in making the two organizations distinct.

§ 639. That we may understand the struggle for supremacy which eventually arises, and tends to mark off more and more the ecclesiastical structure from the political structure, we must glance at the sources of sacerdotal power.

First comes the claim of the priest, as representing the deity, to give a sanction to the authority of the civil ruler. At the present time among some of the uncivilized, as the Zulus, we find this claim recognized.

In ancient Egypt the king, wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics, could be crowned only after having been made one of their body. Then among the Hebrews we have the familiar case of Saul who was anointed by Samuel in God’s name. Passing without further cases to the acquired power of the popes, which became such that kings, receiving their crowns from them, swore obedience; we are shown that the consecration of rulers, continuing in form down to our own day, was, when a reality, an element of priestly power.

Next may be named the supposed influence of the priest with supernatural beings. Wherever faith is unqualified, dread of the evils which his invocations may bring, or trust in his ability to obtain blessings, gives him immense advantages. Even where each man could offer sacrifices, yet Edition: current; Page: [128] the professional priests profited by their supposed special knowledge. Instance the case of Rome, where their power was thus enhanced.

Of course where propitiation of a deity could be made only by sacerdotal agency—where, as among the Chibchas, “no sacrifice or offering, public or private, could be made but by the hands of the priest”—the ecclesiastical organization gained great strength.

To the influence possessed by priests as intercessors, may be added some allied influences similarly rooted in the accepted superstitions. One is the assumed power to grant or refuse forgiveness of sins. Then there is the supposed need for a passport to the other world; as shown us by usages in ancient Mexico, in Japan, and in Russia. Once more there is the dreaded excommunication, which, under the Christian system, as under the system of the druids, was visited especially on those who disregarded ecclesiastical authority.

To powers which priests acquire from their supposed relations with the gods, must be added powers of other kinds. In early societies they form the cultured class. Even the medicine-man of the savage is usually one who has some information not possessed by those around; and the developed priesthoods of established nations, as of the Egyptians and the Chaldeans, show us how knowledge of surrounding phenomena, accumulated and transmitted, enabling them to predict astronomical occurrences and do other astonishing things, greatly exalts them in the eyes of the uninitiated. With the further influence thus gained must be joined that gained by acquaintance with the art of writing. Beyond Edition: current; Page: [129] the wonder excited among the common people by the ability to convey ideas in hieroglyphics, ideographs, etc., there is the immense aid to co-operation throughout the ecclesiastical hierarchy which an exclusive means of communicating intelligence gives; and the history of mediæval Europe shows how power to read and write, possessed by priests but rarely by others, made their assistance indispensable in various civil transactions and secured great advantages to the Church. Nor must we forget the kindred enhancements of influence arising from the positions of prelates as the teachers of civil rulers. In mediæval Europe, bishops “were the usual preceptors of the princes;” and in Mandalay at the present time, the highest church dignitary, who stands next to the king in authority, “is generally made patriarch from having been the King’s instructor during youth.”

Lastly may be named the power resulting from accumulation of property. Beginning with payments to exorcisers and diviners among savages, progressing to fees in kind to sacrificing priests, and growing by-and-by into gifts made to temples and bribes to their officials, wealth everywhere tends to flow to the ecclesiastical organization. Speaking of ancient Mexico, Zurita says that “besides many towns, a great number of excellent estates were set apart for the maintenance of public worship.” Among the Peruvians the share of the annual produce reserved for religious services was “from a third to a fourth.” In ancient Egypt “the priests lived in abundance and luxury. The portion of the soil allotted to them, the largest in the threefold division, was [at one period] subject to no taxes.” So again in Rome.

And the analogy thus drawn introduces the familiar case of Europe during the middle ages; in which, besides offerings, Edition: current; Page: [130] tithes, etc., the Church had at one time acquired a third of the landed property.

§ 640. Holding in its hands powers, natural and supernatural, thus great and varied, an ecclesiastical organization seems likely to be irresistible, and in sundry places and times has proved irresistible. Where the original blending of Church with State has given place to that vague distinction inevitably resulting from partial specialization of functions accompanying social evolution, there are certain to arise differences of aim between the two; and a consequent question whether the living ruler, with his organization of civil and military subordinates, shall or shall not yield to the organization of those who represent dead rulers and profess to utter their commands. And if, throughout the society, faith is unqualified and terror of the supernatural extreme, the temporal power becomes subject to the spiritual power.

We may trace back this struggle to early stages. Respecting weather-doctors among the Zulus, and the popular valuation of them as compared with chiefs, we read:—

To which it should be added that the chief among the Zulus, habitually jealous of the medicine-man, in some cases puts him to death. In another form, an example of the conflict comes to us from Samoa. At a council of war which the Samoans held to concert measures of vengeance on the Tongans, the high priest, “a bold, violent, unscrupulous man, who combined in his own person the threefold office of warrior, prophet, and priest,” urged that the Tongan prisoners should be put to immediate death. The king opposed this proposal, and hence originated a feud between the priest and the king, which resulted in a civil war, the overthrow Edition: current; Page: [131] and exile of the king, and usurpation of his place by the priest. Though this contest between a merciful king and a merciless priest does not in all respects parallel that between Saul and Samuel, since Samuel, instead of usurping the kingship himself, merely anointed David; yet the two equally illustrate the struggle for authority which arises between the political head and the supposed mouthpiece of divine commands. Similarly among the Greeks. Curtius, speaking of the time when the Iliad took form, says:—

And we find traces of resistance to civil power among the Romans.

In various ways among various peoples this conflict is shown. Of the Japanese priests in the sixteenth century, Dickson writes:—

Among the Nahuan nations of ancient America, the priests “possessed great power, secular as well as sacerdotal. Yopaa, one of their principal cities, was ruled absolutely by a pontiff, in whom the Zapotec monarchs had a powerful rival.” And the relation between spirtual and temporal rulers here indicated, recalling that between spiritual and temporal rulers in Christendom, reminds us of the long fights for supremacy which Europe witnessed between political heads wielding natural forces and the ecclesiastical head claiming supernatural origin and authority.

§ 641. There are reasons for thinking that the change from an original predominance of the spiritual power over the temporal power to ultimate subjugation of it, is mainly due to that cause which we have found in other cases chiefly Edition: current; Page: [132] operative in determining the higher types of social organization—the development of industrialism.

Already in § 618 we have noted that while their extreme servility of nature made the peoples of ancient America yield unresistingly to an unqualified political despotism appropriate to the militant type of society, it also made them submit humbly to the enormously developed priesthoods of their bloody deities; and we have seen that kindred connexions of traits were shown by various races of the old world in past times. The contrast with other ancient peoples presented by the Greeks, who, as before pointed out, (§§ 484-5, 498) were enabled by favouring conditions to resist consolidation under a despot, at the same time that, especially in Athens, industrialism and its arrangements made considerable progress among them, must here be joined with the fact that there did not arise among the Greeks a priestly hierarchy. And the connexion thus exemplified in classic times between the relatively free institutions proper to industrialism, and a smaller development of the sacerdotal organization, is illustrated throughout European history, alike in place and in time.

The common cause for these simultaneous changes is, as above implied, the modification of nature caused by substitution of a life carried on under voluntary co-operation for a life carried on under compulsory co-operation—the transition from a social state in which obedience to authority is the supreme virtue, to a social state in which it is a virtue to resist authority when it transgresses prescribed limits. This modification of nature proceeds from that daily habit of insisting on self-claims while respecting the claims of others, which the system of contract involves. The attitude of mind fostered by this discipline does not favour unqualified submission, either to the political head and his laws or to the ecclesiastical head and his dogmas. While it tends ever to limit the coercive action of the civil ruler, it tends ever to challenge the authority of the priest; and the questioning habit having once commenced, sacerdotal inspiration comes Edition: current; Page: [133] to be doubted, and the power flowing from belief in it begins to wane.

With this moral change has to be joined an intellectual change, also indirectly resulting from development of industrial life. That spreading knowledge of natural causation which conflicts with, and gradually weakens, belief in supernatural causation, is consequent on development of the industrial arts. This gives men wider experiences of uniformities of relation among phenomena; and makes possible the progress of science. Doubtless in early stages, that knowledge of Nature which is at variance with the teachings of priests, is accumulated exclusively by priests; but, as we see in the Chaldean astronomy, the natural order is not at first considered inconsistent with supernatural agency; and then, knowledge of the natural order, so long as it is exclusively possessed by priests, cannot be used to disprove their pretensions. Only as fast as knowledge of the natural order becomes so familiar and so generally diffused as insensibly to change men’s habits of thought, is sacerdotal authority and power diminished by it; and general diffusion of such knowledge is, as we see, a concomitant of industrialism.